Un apéro for openers

So you arrive in Paris for the big World Cup qualifier match between France and Ireland, and you go into a bistro or resto, and sit down to your table for lunch, and the waiter comes over with the menu and says “Désirez-vous un apéritif?” , what do you say? What do you go for?

A beer is obviously out of the question. A wine doesn’t seem quite right either. Un apéritif (or plain old apéro once they regard you as part of the furniture) is designed to prepare the palate and appetite before your meal, though in the Languedoc you are also quite likely to be invited out for an entire session of apéros – a social ritual in its own right nowadays.

Your main problem is that you’re not used to this ritual, and you’re spoiled for choice – “l’embarras du choix”. There is a bewildering array of bottles behind the bar, in all shapes and colours.

Now I’m no expert by any means, but here are the typical things that you see the locals going for, des choix typiques, au moins en Languedoc.

The good news is that the one big thing I’m always getting wrong in French – whether a noun is masculine or feminine – doesn’t seem to apply in Aperitif Universe.

12 aperitifs

Once you’ve had one (or two) apéros, for some reason they all turn out to be masculine. (Though I am probably dreadfully and completely 100% wrong on this). Take the following dozen that I do know the names of – every one of them is masculine:

1. le champagne
2. le Cointreau – the triple sec liqueur with an orange flavour, drunk neat on ice
3. le jus de fruits
4. le kir = a mild aperitif named after Félix Kir, a French Resistance hero and former mayor of Dijon. It’s made with one part crème de cassis (a blackcurrant liqueur) to four parts of dry white wine
5. le kir royal - one part crème de cassis, five parts champagne
6. le kir pétillant – made with sparkling wine this time
7. le martini (une marque de vermouth rouge ou blanc)
8. le muscat - a fortified wine from muscat grapes. In the Languedoc-Roussilllon you get some really excellent versions including Muscat de Frontignan, Muscat de Lunel, Muscat de Mireval, Muscat de Rivesaltes and Muscat de St-Jean Minervois
9. le Noilly Prat - from Marseillan, the essential ingredient in a dry martini cocktail (one part Noilly Prat, two parts gin and a dash of orange bitters)
10. le pastis (liqueur d’anis), the aniseedy drink that’s intensely popular in the south of France, first commercialised by Paul Ricard in the 1930s. Talking of which, there’s le Ricard too
11. le soda
12. le whisky (or is it le whiskey?)

And that’s just for openers. The word apéritif comes from the Latin word “apertitiuvum”, apparently. Which means opener.

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